COPENHAGEN – Food addiction is threefold more prevalent among individuals with clinically diagnosed mental disorders than in the general population, according to a report from the Food Addiction Denmark (FADK) project.
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This finding provides support for the hypothesis that food addiction is a key link in the chain connecting psychiatric disorders to increased risk of obesity, which in turn contributes to the substantially shorter life expectancy of psychiatric patients, Christina Horsager, MD, a cofounder of the project, said at the annual congress of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology.
The FADK project is designed to fill in major gaps in the understanding of food addiction. The project included a 2018 Danish nationwide questionnaire survey of 1,394 individuals with various mental disorders and 1,699 others from the general population. The questionnaire included the Yale Food Addiction Scale Version 2.0 (Psychol Addict Behav. 2016 Feb;30[1]:113-21), which was used to identify affected individuals, as well as psychopathology rating scales, explained Dr. Horsager, of the child and adolescent psychiatry department at Aalborg (Denmark) University Hospital.
The prevalence of food addiction was 9% in the general population and 26.5% in individuals with mental disorders. The highest prevalence was, not surprisingly, in individuals with a DSM-5 diagnosis of an eating disorder. The rate was 30% in individuals with a DSM-5 personality disorder, 28% in those with a mood disorder, 17% with autism and other pervasive developmental disorders, just under 12% with a psychoactive substance use disorder, and 16% among patients with ADHD and other behavioral disorders.
But then again, the medications for ADHD tend to suppress appetite.
Obesity was significantly more prevalent among survey respondents who met criteria for food addiction, by a margin of 44.7% to 33.4%.
Food addiction is not an official DSM disorder. In fact, it’s a highly controversial construct: Some behavioral scientists think it has the classic hallmarks of a bona fide eating or substance use disorder; others don’t. Dr. Horsager highlighted the first systematic review of the evidence regarding food addiction, in which the University of Florida, Gainesville, authors concluded: “Overall, findings support food addiction as a unique construct consistent with criteria for other substance use disorder diagnoses. ... Though both behavioral and substance-related factors are implicated in the addictive process, symptoms appear to better fit criteria for substance use disorder than behavioral addiction” (Nutrients. 2018 Apr 12;10[4]:477. doi: 10.3390/nu10040477).
Food addiction is characterized by a compulsion to overeat calorie-dense, highly processed, super-palatable, sugar- and fat-laden foods. In this era of an ongoing global obesity epidemic, the public has become enthralled with the concept; a recent Google search of the term “food addiction” coughed up 288 million results.
The Food Addiction Denmark project findings warrant prospective studies examining whether treatment of food addiction might improve the prognosis of patients with mental disorders, according to Dr. Horsager.
She reported having no financial conflicts regarding her presentation.